loovslooksWhat's the difference?

Which to use

“loo” and “looks” are a confusable French pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.

#47,432
“loo” frequency rank
#25,386
“looks” frequency rank
72818
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature loo looks
Definition Cabinets, toilettes, waters, petit coin (pièce destinée à faire ses besoins). Pluriel de look.

Where the eye mixes loo and looks

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 3 letters in sequence.

3 ch
loo
5 ch
looks

Visual trap between loo and looks

A purely visual mix-up. loo (\lu\) and looks (\luk\) are said differently, so reading them aloud is the quickest way to catch the wrong one. On the page they stay close: they differ by 2 extra letter(s) - “loo” sits inside “looks”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 72818, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

loo is recorded at frequency rank #47,432, classified as anoun, pronounced \lu\. looks is at rank #25,386, tagged as anoun, pronounced \luk\.

Glosses for this pair are partially populated in our dataset, but the full side-by-side definitions above should still guide you to the right choice.

With a confusion score of 72818, this pair ranks #42,665 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of loo vs looks

Shared letters: lo. Private to "loo": -. Private to "looks": ks.

"loo" · 3 letters · shape CVV  ·  "looks" · 5 letters · shape CVVCC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • looksllooks · lokos · loks · lookks · lookss · loosk · oloks

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "loo" for "looks" ever safe?
No. They are said differently (\lu\ versus \luk\) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
Which is more common, "loo" or "looks"?
"looks" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #25,386 in our French list, against #47,432 for "loo". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

Visual near-miss handled. Browse the word pages or a neighbour when the next look-alike shows up.

  • Full dictionary entry for "loo" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "looks" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #42,665 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "loo" and "looks" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "longo vs loo". Nearby pair
  • Recorded mistypes exist for at least one side of this pair, useful when a spell-checker or OCR lands on the wrong form. See mistypes

Confusion rank #42,665 of 440,172 scored French pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.

Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org) Structured Wiktionary extract

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list